I.Brief
Introduction to Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs)

When a WTO Member enters into a regional trade
agreement (RTA) through which it grants more favourable conditions than for trade
with other WTO Members, it departs from the guiding principle of
non-discrimination defined in the GATT, and the GATS. WTO Members are however permitted to enter
into such arrangements under specific conditions which are spelled out in three
sets of rules:

¨Paragraphs
4 to 10 of Article XXIV of GATT 1994 (as
clarified in the Understanding on the Interpretation of Article XXIV of the
GATT 1994) provide for the formation and operation of customs unions and
free-trade areas covering trade in goods, and interim agreements leading to one
or the other;

¨Paragraph
2(c) of the so-called Enabling
Clause (i.e.,
the 1979 Decision on Differential and More Favourable Treatment, Reciprocity
and Fuller Participation of Developing Countries) refers to preferential trade
arrangements in trade in goods amongst developing country Members; and

¨Article
V of GATS governs
RTAs in the area of trade in services, for both developed and developing country
Members.

In addition,
the Transparency Mechanism — negotiated in the Negotiating Group on Rules
established under the Doha Development Agenda — provides for the early announcement
of any RTA. Each of the above mentioned
sets of rules provide for the notification of RTAs to the WTO;notified RTAs are considered by Members on
the basis of a Factual Presentation drafted by the WTO Secretariat in
consultation with the parties to the RTA. See the dedicated webpage on the WTO General Council Decision on 14 December 2006.

¨A
"Partial Scope" Agreement (PS)."Partial Scope" which is not defined or referred to in the WTO
Agreement, means that the agreement covers only certain products.Partial scope agreements are notified under paragraph
4(a) of the Enabling Clause.

Under the Transparency Mechanism, Members
participating in new negotiations aimed at the conclusion of an RTA shall
endeavour to inform the WTO Secretariat of such negotiations. Members which are parties to a newly signed
RTA shall convey to the Secretariat information on the RTA.

¨Notification

WTO Members entering into RTAs are required
to notify such RTA to the WTO, either under Article XXIV of the GATT 1994
or the Enabling Clause (for RTAs covering trade in goods), or under Article V
of the GATS (for RTAs covering trade in services).In a case of an RTA covering both goods and
services, two notifications are required.The notification should be made following ratification of the RTA and
before the application of preferential treatment between the parties.

¨Notification
of Changes

Any changes affecting the implementation of
an RTA, or the operation of an already implemented RTA, should be notified to
the WTO as soon as possible after the changes occur.

¨Subsequent
reporting

At the end of the RTA's implementation
period, the parties shall submit to the WTO a short report on the realisation
of the liberalization commitments contained in the RTA.

¨Factual
Presentation (FP)

The Factual Presentation
is a document prepared on the responsibility of the WTO Secretariat in conformity
with Article 7 (b) of the Transparency Mechanism in full consultation with the
parties to serve as the basis for the consideration of an RTA by the WTO Membership.It describes the trade environment, the main
characteristics of the agreement, and its impact on market access in the parties
to the RTA.The parties are required to submit
trade and tariff line information as specified in Annex I of the Transparency
Mechanism, within a specified period (usually 10 weeks but 20 weeks for
agreements exclusively between developing countries) after notification. The status of the Factual Presentation may be
either already "distributed" (i.e. issued as an official WTO
document); "not distributed"; or "on hold" if, for example,
specific commitments in services have not yet been agreed.

¨Factual
Abstract (FA)

The Factual Abstract is a short summary of
the main features of the agreement, prepared by the WTO Secretariat in
conformity with Article 22(b) of the Transparency Mechanism.It is prepared for older agreements for which
an examination has already been completed by the CRTA. The
Factual Abstract may be "not distributed" or already "distributed".

¨The case
of agreements notified to the GATT
1947

In the case of agreements notified to the GATT 1947
and covered by Paragraph 22 (a) of the Transparency Decision, the consideration
status may be "No report" or "Report adopted", depending on
whether or not a GATT 1947
working party conducted an examination of such agreements and issued a report. For
Agreements falling under the Enabling Clause, no examination was mandated and
hence such agreements do not have a working party report.

¨Questions
and Replies

Before an agreement is considered by WTO
Members, they may submit questions in writing to the parties to the agreement.The parties are expected to provide written
answers to these questions in advance of the meeting to consider that RTA. A document containing the questions and
replies submitted by Members and the parties is issued three working days in
advance of the CRTA or the CTD meeting where the RTA is to be considered.

¨Standard
Format for information on RTAs

The objective of the
Standard Format for Information on RTAs was to facilitate and standardize the
provision of initial information by parties to regional trade agreements. As
of 2006, the practice of submitting standard formats has been discontinued and
superseded by the transparency provisions of the Transparency Mechanism.

¨Biennial
report

Paragraph 9 and 11 of
the Understandingon the
Interpretation of Article XXIV of the GATT 1994 provide for the biennial submission of a report on the
operation of agreements notified under Article XXIV.As
of 2006, the practice of submitting biennial reports has been discontinued and
superseded by the transparency provisions of the Transparency Mechanism.

The Regional Trade Agreement Information
System (RTA-IS) is a comprehensive database of all RTAs notified to the GATT/WTO.The application allows users to search and
export available information on any notified RTA, as well as on the
consideration process of a particular RTA within the CRTA or
the CTD.In particular, it allows a
dynamic search through all notified RTAs according to a selection of criteria,
such as year of entry into force, type of agreement, etc.The RTA-IS is maintained in the WTO's three
official languages, English, French and Spanish by the Regional Trade Agreement Section in
the Trade Policies Review Division of
the WTO.

The RTA-IS
contains information only on those agreements that have been notified, or
for which an early announcement has been made, to the WTO.Information on the content of these
agreements and the parties thereto reflects information provided by the parties
to the WTO.Therefore, membership to the
agreement may not be up to date if changes have not been notified by the
parties;similarly, any subsequent
change, any additional protocol etc. to the agreement will be available in the
database only to the extent that it has been notified.For further information, please consult
either the RTA Parties' website(s) or contact the RTA Section (see
"Contact RTA Section").

The information is presented in the form of
an "ID-Card", which displays all the factual information available on
a given agreement:its signatories, date
of signature and entry into force, a link to the website where the text of the
agreement and its annexes can be found, the WTO process that has taken place
regarding that agreement, etc.If the
agreement has been the subject of a Factual Presentation or a Factual Abstract,
a list of the main topics covered by the agreement and presented in the
document is provided.Also, the tariff
and trade data that have been received from the parties for the preparation of
the Factual Presentation is included in the ID-Card.

The RTA-IS also allows the user to retrieve
and export pre-defined WTO reports of all RTAs in force, already sorted by date
of entry into force etc.

The Summary Tables provide detailed
figures on the number of RTAs notified to the GATT/WTO
and still in force, sorted by notification, by Type of Agreement and by Status
in the WTO consideration process. WTO
statistics on RTAs, as contained in the summary tables, are based on
notification requirements rather than on physical numbers of RTAs. Thus, for an
RTA that includes both goods and services, we count two notifications (one for
goods and the other services), even though it is physically one RTA. Nevertheless,
figures on the physical number of RTAs (counting goods and services together),
are provided in the last table.

¨The search by country/territory also makes
available a number of background WTO documents on WTO Members' trade laws,
policies, or trade environment, such as the Trade Profile, the Tariff Profile
or the most recent Trade Policy Review.

¨Allows
the user to select a combination of search parameters to obtain a list of RTAs
meeting those parameters.The user can
then click on the RTA name to obtain its ID Card.For example, the user can select the
following criterion: Type of Agreement = Economic Integration Agreements (EIA);
the list will show all notified
agreements that are: either EIAs (for trade in services only); or EIAs and Customs Unions, or EIAs and Free
Trade Agreements (for agreements covering trade in goods and services).It is also possible to search by multiple
criteria, e.g. all FTAs, signed by a given country, with a specific year of
entry into force.

¨This
option allows the selection of an RTA from the list of short RTA titles in
alphabetical order.The user can also
search by a specific string of characters, for example typing "asia"
will generate a list of all agreements whose short title contains the string
"asia",
such as the Asian Free Trade Agreement (AFTA).

¨The
short RTA titles are not the full titles of the agreements, which can be found
under the Text of the Agreement.In the
short titles, the United
States is
replaced by "US", and the European Communities by
"EC".Therefore, the user must
search by US and not by "United" to generate a list of agreements to
which the United
States is
a signatory.

B.Glossary of RTA
ID-CARD terms

The RTA is
an accession (i.e. Accession = Yes) ifthe agreement provides for a new signatory to adhere to an existing
agreement.In that case, the existing
agreement appears under "related agreements"

Agreement title

Shortened title of
the agreement, or acronym. The full title of the agreement can be
found in the official text of the agreement.

Consideration status

Stage reached in
process of consideration of the RTA in the WTO, including the
underlying documentation. The consideration status can be one of the
following:

1. FA
distributed:the Factual Abstract has
been issued.

2. FA not
distributed: the Factual Abstract has not been issued.

3. FP
distributed:the Factual Presentation
has been issued.

4. FP not
distributed:the Factual Presentation has
not been issued.

5. FP on
hold:the Factual Presentation is on
hold.

6. No report:no report has been issued for this RTA.

7. Report
adopted:a report has been issued and
adopted for this RTA. Items 6
and 7 relate only to those RTAs notified during the GATT years.

Coverage

Goods, or services, or both, as notified by the signatories to the
agreement.

Composition

Bilateral (two
signatories) or plurilateral (three or more signatories) to the agreement.

Cross Regional

The signatories to
the agreement belong to at least two regions.

Party Type

This field
indicates if one Party is an RTA, or if all parties are RTAs.

Related agreement

Another agreement with
the same signatories but a change of scope, for example an additional
agreement to include services or the same agreement with new signatories (Accession).

Signatories, original

The original
signatories are the entities that signed the agreement.

Signatories,
current

The current signatories are those entities that are currently party
to the agreement. For some plurilateral RTAs, these signatories may not
always reflect the notifications made by the Parties which may have been
submitted a long time ago and have not since been updated.

Status

The current status
of the agreement as notified by the parties, can be one of the following:

1.Early announcement-Under negotiation:early announcement to the WTO of an RTA
that is under negotiation.

2. Early announcement-Signed: early announcement of an RTA that has
been signed but is not yet in force.

For those agreements
that have been the subject of a Factual
Presentation or a Factual Abstract, a list of the main topics covered by the
agreement and presented in the document is provided. These are:

[1]On 1 December 2009, the Treaty of
Lisbon amending the Treaty on European Union and
the Treaty establishing the European Community (done at Lisbon, 13 December 2007) entered into
force. On 29 November 2009, the WTO received
a Verbal Note (WT/L/779) from the Council of the European Union and the
Commission of the European Communities stating that, by virtue of the Treaty
of Lisbon, as of 1 December 2009, the European
Union replaces andsucceeds the European Community.